“Why, what’s happened to him?”

“Happened?  Stoller’s happened.”

“Oh, have you seen him, already?  Well?”

“Well, if you had been going to pick out that type of man, you’d have rejected him, because you’d have said he was too pat.  He’s like an actor made up for a Western millionaire.  Do you remember that American in ‘L’Etranger’ which Bernhardt did in Boston when she first came?  He, looks exactly like that, and he has the worst manners.  He stood talking to me with his hat on, and a toothpick in his mouth; and he made me feel as if he had bought me, along with Burnamy, and had paid too much.  If you don’t give him a setting down, Basil, I shall never speak to you; that’s all.  I’m sure Burnamy is in some trouble with him; he’s got some sort of hold upon him; what it could be in such a short time, I can’t imagine; but if ever a man seemed to be, in a man’s power, he does, in his!

“Now,” said March, “your pronouns have got so far beyond me that I think we’d better let it all go till after supper; perhaps I shall see Stoller myself by that time.”

She had been deeply stirred by her encounter with Stoller, but she entered with impartial intensity into the fact that the elevator at Pupp’s had the characteristic of always coming up and never going down with passengers.  It was locked into its closet with a solid door, and there was no bell to summon it, or any place to take it except on the ground-floor; but the stairs by which she could descend were abundant and stately; and on one landing there was the lithograph of one of the largest and ugliest hotels in New York; how ugly it was, she said she should never have known if she had not seen it there.

The dining-room was divided into the grand saloon, where they supped amid rococo sculptures and frescoes, and the glazed veranda opening by vast windows on a spread of tables without, which were already filling up for the evening concert.  Around them at the different tables there were groups of faces and figures fascinating in their strangeness, with that distinction which abashes our American level in the presence of European inequality.

“How simple and unimpressive we are, Basil,” she said, “beside all these people!  I used to feel it in Europe when I was young, and now I’m certain that we must seem like two faded-in old village photographs.  We don’t even look intellectual!  I hope we look good.”

“I know I do,” said March.  The waiter went for their supper, and they joined in guessing the different nationalities in the room.  A French party was easy enough; a Spanish mother and daughter were not difficult, though whether they were not South-American remained uncertain; two elderly maiden ladies were unmistakably of central Massachusetts, and were obviously of a book-club culture that had left no leaf unturned; some Triestines gave themselves away by their Venetian accent; but a large group at a farther table were